


Alien on the Milk Carton

by MoonSilverSprite



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Alien Abduction, Disasters, Family, Human Trafficking, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kidnapping, Missing Persons, Pedophilia, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Snap World, Prostitution, Serial Killers, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 11:11:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20865260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonSilverSprite/pseuds/MoonSilverSprite
Summary: Peter Quill is back in his childhood hometown, but something is playing on his mind. Namely, the man who was accused of killing him all those years ago. Peter tries to build up his courage to face this man, researching and hunting down immoral people who used the Snap to their advantage. But will it be enough to face the murderer on Death Row?Partial sequel to my 'Buzzfeed Unsolved' story 'The Confusing Disappearance of Peter Quill'.





	Alien on the Milk Carton

**Author's Note:**

> This story has been hanging around for weeks on my computer and I just wanted to put it out there. I apologize if it is not perfect; I've been rather under the weather lately.
> 
> My co-creator, breather89, is on FanFiction.net and also wrote a similar story two years ago. However, I prefer this story.
> 
> I also mention something in this story that may be unsettling for some readers, so I will have to add a trigger warning. I chose to write about this particular subject because it almost certainly happened in some form in the aftermath of Thanos' snap, at least on Earth.
> 
> The title comes from the phrase 'milk carton kid' and the book _The Face on the Milk Carton_.
> 
> The bad guy's nickname, Peg, comes from the fact that possible serial killer Joseph Edward Duncan III was nicknamed Jed.

The date was October 28th 2023. It had been five months since Peter had been brought back from the dead and he was currently standing outside his granddad’s house in St. Charles.

Thor was over in New York, back to what had been the Avengers compound. Drax, Mantis, Nebula and Groot were waiting in the ship, parked in a field half a mile out of town. Due to the fact that it was already night, Rocket had felt safe walking with Quill down the streets, only lit by streetlamps.

The town had seemed so different once Peter had entered. He wondered if he would even recognize the people he’d left behind.

Or his granddad.

“Go ahead,” Rocket reassured him, “Can’t be that bad.”

Peter swallowed. “I – I barely recall the man. He – he’s got to be in his nineties by now, isn’t he?”

“Eighty-nine,” Rocket answered, “and he’s spent a good chunk of his retirement years looking for you, Quill.”

Peter straightened his jacket and then pressed the doorbell with a shaking finger.

As they waited, Peter tried to ask Rocket how he’d found Grandpa Quill. The raccoon shrugged.

“After I was alone,” he sighed, pausing for a split second, “I thought I’d have a look at your family back here. One of your uncles had been dusted. So were a few cousins. I think your niece also dusted.”

“I have a niece?” Peter asked, confused.

“Niece, cousin’s kid, not really sure how Earth families work. A kid definitely disappeared. Anyway, I – I opened the door and I saw your old man there. He – well, he tried to thwack me with a broom, but when he saw I was an alien, he just asked if the rumor was true.”

“Rumor?” Peter asked.

As they saw the light turn on and shadows slowly make their way towards the door, Rocket reeled off, “Some people said you were taken by aliens. A guy actually saw the abduction. No-one believed him, since he was the prime suspect.”

Peter was about to ask what Rocket was saying when the door opened. An old, withered man slowly looked up at Peter, before he shakily held his hand out. Was it old age or just a fear that Peter would disappear?

“Peter?” Grandpa Quill asked.

Peter swallowed, trying not to let the tear roll down his cheek and nodded. “Yes.” His voice cracked up.

The old man pulled his grandson close and gripped him tightly. It seemed as if he wouldn’t let go. When he finally did, he asked, “Did you get lost in space coming back?”

Peter looked at Rocket, before realizing that his granddad hadn’t been told that Peter was dusted. Peter just asked, “Can I please come in?”

It had been twenty-four hours. Peter was in his old childhood bedroom again. It hadn’t changed in thirty-five years. His cassette tapes were lined up on the wall. The children’s books were all still on the shelves. His pillow was pumped and propped. His clothes were in his wardrobe. Peter looked at a shirt and smiled as he saw the small tear from an incident with scissors still hadn’t been sewn up. They really had left everything as it had been the night he was taken.

Everything in here seemed so small now. These clothes probably wouldn’t even fit Rocket.

Drax, Mantis, Nebula and Groot had come by that morning. Groot had just slumped into an armchair, playing a video game. Peter had told his granddad that he wouldn’t even notice they were there.

And aside from the loose leaves and twigs, Drax trying to open a can with a spanner, Nebula glaring at everyone and Mantis staring at Grandpa Quill and saying his emotional state looked as if it had been through the washing machine, nobody would notice the six aliens in the house.

But now, the main problem was that Mantis wanted to go out. As Halloween was a few days away, Peter had been fine with the idea, but he didn’t approve of what Mantis wanted to wear.

“I don’t understand why we can’t wear costumes. You said this was an Earth tradition where people dress up,” Mantis groaned, kneeling down as she looked inside a box of clothes Rocket had somehow managed to snatch from a charity store, “I would look lovely as a princess.”

Peter wasn’t sure what was stranger; the fact that Rocket had stolen Halloween costumes with everyday clothes or that Mantis wanted to dress up in an outfit that wouldn’t look out of place in a cowboys and Indians program.

“Because – we agreed that this Halloween we would go as ourselves,” Peter stood up from the table and walked over as Mantis held up the rather revealing outfit by a full-length mirror, “and we’re weird-looking enough without everyone staring.”

Then he asked, “Why do you think that looks anything like a princess? It’s a prairie outfit.”

“Morgan watched some videos with me on her television the day after the funeral,” Mantis put the clothes down, “She thought that we’d like it because there was a raccoon and a talking tree. And she said the lady was a princess.”

Rocket grimaced as he put down his 'Hunka-Hulking Burnin’ Fudge' and licked his snout. “That raccoon didn’t talk and the tree made absolute sense. Don’t know why the little girl wanted us to watch.”

“I am Groot.” The tree crossly remarked from the armchair.

“Yeah, yeah,” Rocket waved his paw, “You fell asleep. Anyway, Mantis, you don’t act like a princess.” He settled down by Groot and looked at the video game the tree had been playing.

Peter was going to ask how Rocket knew, but Mantis spoke up.

“I meet the qualifications.” she looked at Peter, “According to the interweb, I need to,” she concentrated as she trailed the points off, “Have magic hair or magic hands.”

Her antennae glowed.

“Talk to animals –“

Rocket belched as he put down a beer can.

“Be poisoned or cursed; I think dusting probably counts. Be kidnapped or enslaved and I definitely was, or have daddy issues. So I qualify as a princess, which means I can wear this outfit on treating night.”

“Trick or treat, Mantis,” Peter explained as he heard a banging from outside, “I think Nebula’s dropped something. Excuse me.”

As he left, Mantis gave a small giggle. “Oh, Nebula fits most of the qualifications, too! We could go together!”

Poor Mantis had no idea why Peter and Rocket had started laughing hysterically.

“I think you would look wonderful.” Mantis held up the picture of a princess in a book on films to Nebula, “See? She has a bow and arrow and I know how much you like brandishing weapons. I think that green dress would look perfect on you.”

Nebula held an icy glare at Mantis. “If you even suggest that again, I will do something else with the bow and arrow.”

“I told you, you don’t need costumes for Halloween,” Peter pulled his boots on as he got ready to go out into his grandfather’s garden, “We already look bizarre.”

“It can’t be weirder than Drax and Mantis’ wedding.” Rocket got down from Grandpa Quill’s scooter, now modified with a jet propeller.

“But our wedding was perfect,” Drax argued, as he came out of the door and up to the scooter, testing the frame by sitting down on the seat, “I chose a beautiful view of the Contraxia mountain range. And we had some lovely slave dancers at the reception. I still have some of the gloves from their shed skin.”

Peter groaned inwardly, remembering how the best man’s speech had been a coin toss between Rocket’s five pages of talking about Drax’s worst exploits, or consisting of a minute of just ‘I am Groot’.

Drax had been careful in the wedding choices, taking aspects from all of the team. The flowers were from his planet, Mantis’ dress from Planet X. The food had been taken from Terra, although it only consisted of fried chicken (since it included ground animal bones) and three types of ice cream (since it contained beaver urine, which Groot found funny).

“I even followed the Terra tradition,” Drax got up from the scooter as it wobbled beneath him, “Someone old, new, borrowed and blue.”

Peter blinked. Then he told Drax, “That’s something old, new, borrowed and blue.” Although, now he thought about it, that did explain why Drax had invited Morgan Stark by use of hologram and a random Ravager carpenter.

Nebula turned her gaze towards Drax. “Is that why you sat me with the god of thunder?”

Peter’s mind drifted back to the reception. Groot had eaten a whole carton of ‘Black Cherry Widow’, most of a carton of 'Black Panther Gateau' and threw up on a dancer, Thor had two barrels of mead and reminisced about the last wedding he had been to on a planet other than Earth and Peter had tuned into his CD player once the cows’ legs had been flung around.

A few nights later, Peter sat on the doorstep as he watched the Halloween celebrations from neighboring houses.

It was the first time anyone here had been enthusiastic about Halloween or Christmas in five years, so many small children were either extremely shy or very excited, dragging parents along, dressed in various costumes.

As expected, no-one took a second glance at the Guardians when they’d had to go grocery shopping with Grandpa Quill. When Peter had gone past the town hall earlier that day with Mantis, he had seen a group of adults leading Scout groups inside. Some of them had said that the two had ‘neat costumes’.

When they’d gotten into town, Peter saw that a there were more vegan restaurants than other types. He asked his granddad, only to be told that since the animal population had decreased, people turned to easy to make foods or vegan stuff.

“Can’t stand it, myself.” He sighed.

Peter learnt that everyone called the Decimation different names. Here in the Midwest it was named the Dust Rapture. Officials named it the Snap, after a press conference given by Avengers. Other countries had different names; in France, Quebec and French-speaking areas of America, it was named ‘le _Grand Departe_’, which made it sound less terrible than it really was. Spain, Mexico, several South American countries and the border states named it ‘_Carniceria_’, which Grandpa Quill said meant ‘carnage’. The Russians and most of Eastern Europe called the event ‘Отчаяния’, which translated into ‘despair’. In India, the Decimation was named ‘Maha Dukh’ or ‘great sorrow’.

When they’d been packing groceries into Grandpa Quill’s car, one of the adults from the Scouts had asked if Peter and Mantis were from a theater company.

When Peter had come back to his grandfather’s home and asked why people thought that, his grandfather explained.

“You’d be surprised how many travelling theater companies sprang up after the Dust Rapture,” he had said, “A few cities had lost their power. Half a dozen came through St. Louis on coast to coast trips in the first year.”

“Sounds cool,” Peter remarked, “Remember how I wanted to go and see Cirque de Soleli? Then Mom –“

His voice trailed off for a moment. He kept telling himself that there must have been about a thousand performances he had seen in space that were far better or more extravagant than Cirque de Soleli.

Apparently, the lady behind the pharmacy counter where his grandfather picked up medication from worked at the local movie theater. Said theater was converted into a stage when so many actors came through. There were a bunch of old posters in the cupboard in the guest room.

Peter leafed through the section. “_Hurricane Players_, _Swan’s Men_, _Cape Cod Company_?” he asked, raising his eyebrow. “How did they come up with these?”

He picked up the next poster, which happened to be from a performance of Russian folk music. His grandfather chuckled. “They were _awful_,” he grinned, “Actually got pelted when they were playing. _Mudslide_ was better, but the Mexican woman didn’t half mumble her lines. _Sea Breeze_ was so good that they were in Oklahoma for a month. The _Dragon Fruit_ players and _Emerald Isle_ were here at the same time and started a brawl.”

“How did people get these names?” Peter asked again.

“Some were actual theatre companies before the Dust Rapture. Others got names from alcoholic cocktails. Over in Europe, they took names from pubs or hotels they used to know. There are at least a half dozen players in England called _Nelson’s Arms_.” His grandfather chuckled and sat down on the bed. “The young ladies in _Milk & Honey_ were pretty, mind. Good actors, true, but all the guys just went along to see how good-looking the gals were. The main line-up was a blonde, redhead and brunette, the whole ice cream package! The brunette, can’t have been more than twenty. She giggled like anything –“

“Ew! Grandpa!” Peter contorted.

His grandfather shrugged. “Suit yourself. One of the guys from the college asked if one of the younger blondes would mind if she lived with him. Said he had a room going spare. You should’ve seen his face when she said she was fourteen! He ran a mile!”

Then his grandfather’s smile faded. “You know, some – bad men said, after the dust had settled, so to speak, that – well, since the population had fallen…”

He pulled the bedside drawer out and handed Peter a wooden box. “I think you need some catching up, boy.”

Peter sat on the couch as he looked inside the wooden box of discs by the counter. They were all labelled and in plastic packets. Strange how when it came to technical advancements, Earth had changed since his childhood, but at the same time rather primitive. He lifted up a random disc and felt his blood run cold.

_America’s Most Wanted, 6-3-89._

Peter didn’t know what exactly this was, but he had a pretty good idea it was concerning his kidnapping.

Some of the silver discs had the name PEG written on the front in marker pen. Several documentaries, TV coverage, appeals. He remembered his grandfather saying something about suspecting somebody in jail, but never said much about the guy. When Peter turned on his grandfather’s laptop, he typed his name into the search engine.

_17 million results_.

The suggestions underneath included ‘Peter Quill **aliens**’, ‘Peter Quill **Patrick Edward Glover**’, ‘**Tony Stark funeral video**’.

Peter looked at the one with ‘funeral video’. He had a lump in his throat as he watched a video of the funeral – after the main part, to his relief – where the Guardians were speaking with Fury. Peter recognized this as when he had talked about whether his Earth family were all right.

The footage was really blurry and mainly focused on his face. It was shoddy work, but there was one split second when he turned and faced the camera, if unknowingly. Peter wondered who had filmed it. Maybe Kid Peter or that Harley boy. Someone who knew how Earth technology worked.

The video paused at that second, with the caption underneath asking in tawdry yellow writing, _‘Peter Quill? Has he been in space for three decades?’_ Then the second half of the screen was taken up with a poster from the NCMEC, of a computerized picture of what Peter may have looked like in 2016.

He decided to look at quotes underneath. They were generally mixed. Some said that this was proof the footage from the hospital had been from aliens. Another suggested that maybe aliens had had contact with Earth since the Eighties and nobody knew.

A second group of people said there were many possible suggestions. Quite a few mentioned the name ‘Patrick Glover’. One comment was that it couldn’t be Peter because ‘the alien’s too fat’.

He then slotted a disc with _‘Patrick Edward Glover: The Man, the Beast’_ into the DVD player. As Peter silently wished he had one in the _Benatar_, the computer whirred and the documentary began.

After a while, Peter knew a little more about the man people thought murdered him for over thirty years. Patrick – nicknamed ‘Peg’ by neighborhood children, but Glover’s view on said nickname was he hadn’t chosen or agreed to let them call him that – had been a lonely child, often skipping school in Fort Atkinson. When he was eight, he accidentally entered a brothel on one of these days and hadn’t understood what was going on but knew something inside him made him enjoy it.

Apparently in the 1960s nobody talked to children about how their bodies were changing.

Patrick was caught after two months and whipped by his mother’s boyfriend. Patrick had been curious about what he saw and the next part was so gross that Peter skipped that section.

Then clips of a music video came up. The documentary narrator spoke over the lyrics playing. “In February 1993 the band _Mermaid Lemonade_ produced a song called ‘Beyond Reach’. On MTV the music video was accompanied by photos of missing children. Twelve missing children were selected in the Central US video.”

A picture of a blond girl staring at the camera with a slightly open mouth came onto screen. The text read ‘_Stella Douglas – Disappeared 1987 – Age 12_’. The narrator spoke again, saying that Stella had been a victim of Patrick Edward Glover. Then another picture, this time of a smiling older boy, came on screen. ‘_Ryan Pearson – Disappeared 1989 – Age 14_’. He too was killed by Glover.

Peter paused the video and typed the name of the song and band into the search engine. According to the top result, the original Central US video had been taken down in 1994 after Glover’s victims had been identified.

Curious, Peter felt queasy when he read that even thirty years after the video was released, three children on the Central US version were still missing. Then he took a double take at the names.

His own name was there.

Watching a clip of that video online, Peter saw a mixture of child actors running down streets, some with bags, waiting in the dark at train stations. There was even one young prostitute in a doorway as a huge shadow of a guy loomed over her. The final part of the music video featured children in a playground being watched by a guy with a van, before he approaches a girl of maybe nine or ten years old. He talks to her and her mouth opens in a silent scream as the indie music plays throughout.

It did not make Peter feel any better when the final section of the video had the back of the van driving away and the picture of the final child was shown at the end.

His picture. That one where he was smiling awkwardly at the camera, cropped from beside his mother’s bed, maybe three weeks before she died.

Peter needed a break.

That night, Peter sat down in the lounge as he struggled to try to sleep. He had no idea why he was watching the remainder of the documentary. It was slightly like seeing a car crash or a spaceship crash; it was bile fascination.

Photos of the missing children littered the screen. And it just made him feel worse.

A milk carton with the face of Glover’s first victim, Ruby Lynch, with her physical description and that she disappeared on the fourteenth of August 1982. About how her case was one of those that caused the founding of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

How Ben Lowe from Fargo had been getting modelling clay on Friday at the end of February 1986, but wasn’t killed until Sunday.

Stella Douglas, living in a church shelter with her mother, had been seen talking to a man with a van, but her case was listed as a runaway, probably due to her home life, or lack of one. Her mother had gone to homeless shelters and hobo camps in Minnesota and Wisconsin for six years until she died of alcohol poisoning, before her daughter’s body was recovered. To be slightly fair, she had had a drinking problem anyway when Stella vanished.

Since Ryan Pearson was described by the narrator as being sturdy and tall (and the kid actor they had portraying him definitely matched) he was automatically assumed to be a runaway, since no police officer could believe he was abducted. Peter saw where they were coming from, but no matter what someone’s physical stature was, they could easily be tricked.

Like Peter had been, by his father.

Then it talked about seven more cases that were linked to Glover after the bodies were identified. Eight, if you included Peter’s, which the documentary certainly did since it had all eight pictures up on a bulletin board.

Fourteen-year-old Tanya Sullivan had also been considered a runaway when she vanished from outside her job at a Wendy’s in Mason City in 1985. The girl had been passed around foster care for most of her life. Peter wondered if she too would have been included in the music video if her body hadn’t been found outside Wingville in 1992.

Lola Law was twelve when she was snatched just after Christmas 1987. Taken from Minnesota, her body was discovered in a field a few miles away across the Wisconsin border. Naturally, her stepfather was considered a suspect until Glover’s arrest.

Graham Myers’ kidnapping was strangely similar to Peter’s own; the nine-year-old had been picnicking with his sister and friends in the lovely-sounding village of Thornapple when he had gone to a neighboring house to get a bottle. His coat was found on the grass soon after; the body near a barn outside Green Bay two weeks later.

That murder was just over a year after Peter’s case. No wonder the FBI had linked him to Glover, Peter thought as he sat back on the armchair.

Rochelle Robertson from Peoria Heights was thought to have been killed by a trucker, since due to her age (she was almost thirteen) she was considered a runaway. This was despite the evidence that Glover had been in the area Rochelle’s body was found. As Peter listened, he heard the narrator say that Glover dropped off some of his goods at the farm in South Beloit, the same place Rochelle was found four days later.

The police had evidence against this guy and they didn’t question him.

Peter felt disgusted. They had evidence that this person may have murdered for almost four years and didn’t bother to investigate. True, he told himself, there must have been several thousands of other people they had to interview but this was a joke.

Peter thought back to when one of the Ravagers had been found guilty by his peers of something with a child. Yondu hadn’t told Peter exactly what, since Peter was still relatively young. Peter remembered the guilty Ravager in pieces being dumped in a pool.

The narrator described three more cases not linked to Glover, but considered responsible anyway from what he had said.

The first child was Dixie Ray, eight, taken from Futrell, by the Kentucky-Illinois border just under two years before Glover went on his murder spree. While Glover couldn’t definitely be linked, he had admitted to Miranda that he killed a boy in Kentucky and had vacationed there that year.

The second was Ella Armstrong, eleven, taken from her trailer park in Portage in March 1993. Not only had Glover’s preferred diner on that route been close to the trailer park but Ella’s body was found nearly a year later, only days before the spree, in Lake Koshkonong in Fort Atkinson.

The third was Prue Daniels, his suspected oldest victim before the spree. Prue had just turned fifteen when she and some friends were illegally drinking by Pelican Lake, Minnesota the summer before Glover’s spree. The police accused her friends of having done something when under the influence. Prue was found by a hiker outside Tomah three months later. Glover had said that he killed a girl from Pelican Lake, back when hardly anyone outside of the small town knew about the case.

Peter wondered exactly how they knew about these cases. Pausing the video again, he looked up Glover’s murder spree.

There was a map with markings on a site about Glover and his murders. The words ‘Survivors’ stood above the photos of two young girls.

He clicked on the first. Louise Little had had to see her friend be murdered by Glover. She was only seven when he took her. According to a postscript, she was dusted. With another postscript underneath detailing her coming back.

The next one was the real piece of evidence needed to connect Glover to unsolved crimes. Miranda Fletcher had been taken on a horrific journey, but Glover somehow decided to let her live.

Peter would never, even after everything that had happened to him, understand psychopaths.

Miranda hadn’t been dusted. But as Glover had been and when he returned he demanded to be taken off of Death Row – which was now apparently a common problem among Death Row inmates – she had gone along to the hearing and said this man had haunted her childhood and there was no way she would see him go unpunished.

Peter then decided to go back to the first search. It was somehow a lot easier than asking his grandfather. Then he added Missouri to the search engine.

The earliest newspaper articles just had a bad black-and-white picture from St. Louis Dispatch. There wasn’t much, just a few paragraphs on a boy vanishing from a hospital in St. Charles and police asked for information. His mother wasn’t even mentioned.

A few weeks after the disappearance, a longer article from the St. Louis Dispatch and an accompanying colour picture stood out. This one had the last photo taken of him and Meredith. ‘MOTHER DIES OF CANCER – 8-YEAR-OLD SON MISSING A MONTH ON’.

There were more clippings over the next five and a half years. Mentions of anniversaries, leads drying up. But outside of Missouri and probably Illinois, no-one heard much about him. There had been the segment on America’s Most Wanted, sure, but in the days before the internet, nobody knew much.

Then the number of mentions exploded after Glover was arrested. About five hundred and seventy in the St. Louis Dispatch alone in the following twenty years.

Slightly afraid of what he may see, Peter clicked on a link dated April 1994. There wasn’t very much, only concerning the FBI assisting Missouri police on ‘two cases from 1988 and 1991’. It wasn’t until 1996 that his name was linked.

Peter saw his picture on the eighth page of a twelve-page spread on Patrick Edward Glover. The headline read ‘POSSIBLE VICTIMS OF PEG’. The many faces Peter had noticed on the documentary looked out, along with a couple more that were presumably solved, since they hadn’t been on the website about Glover.

Curious, Peter pressed play on the DVD. There was an audio recording of Miranda at the police station, her tiny, high voice slipping a few times. The words on screen indicated that she had been forced to help the monster when he killed his final victims.

Glover had murdered two sets of young couples when he was on his spree across the north Midwest. The first had been two freshmen, Judy Gibbs and Micky Brooks. The photo of them was taken with a bad camera on a couch, but you could see the couple were clearly sweethearts. They were found dead inside a car on a lover’s lane by a search party.

The murder that Miranda had been forced to help with was of Rocky Larson and Fern Stables, two juniors bunking off in a car. Glover made Miranda pretend to be feeling sick and she was so afraid of the man who had grabbed her and done who knows what to her by that point that she did what he said. This had lured the female victim over, at which point Glover held up his pistol (which he ironically had a licence for).

In the interview, Miranda had stumbled over the words. The female officer with her had clearly been doing her best to comfort her, but Peter felt a small pang when he heard the girl ask, after a pause, _“Will I go to prison?”_

Peter couldn’t help but wonder how scared Miranda and Louise must have been.

Just as scared as he had been when Yondu had taken him. The main difference was that Yondu – for lack of a better word – had looked after Peter.

Peter decided to go back to the search results. Several of the top results were to missing persons’ websites. He kept seeing the same acronym everywhere whenever he went to the websites and flicked through the missing children section.

T.A.D

About seventy of them were in the section of St. Louis missing children. Clicking on the picture of three children standing together, he skim-read the results.

“Song family, father dusted, mother killed in car when driverless vehicle hit her…Song children seen talking to man a week after…man believed to have been local sex offender…”

Peter’s voice trailed off. Then he knew what the letters stood for.

Taken After Dusting.

The realization that it wasn’t just good people that were left behind hit Peter like a ton of bricks. Some people, some bad people, would have taken the opportunity to start new lives or commit more crimes.

He tried to tell himself that it wasn’t _completely_ bad. After all, quite a number of the children labelled as T.A.D were under five years old, presumably snatched by parents that wanted to replace their missing children. There were thirty-four in St. Louis alone.

Not that knowing that helped at all.

But some had been older. Some were last seen with known sex offenders, many of which vanished too. Some were taken from overflowing orphanages or temporary orphanages, mainly housed in schools or firehouses. Others were the stereotypical abduction scene; a kid being pulled by a stranger into a vehicle.

It would have been near impossible to find them again. The chaos of the Snap was a serial killer’s hunting dream.

Peter searched in the St. Charles section. Maybe, just maybe, one of his old school friends had lost a child.

He found three from St. Charles, all abducted within two months of the Snap. A fourteen-year-old girl from a temporary orphanage, found dead in a sewer by a factory. A three-year-old taken by a ‘nurse’. A ten-year-old girl still missing, dragged by two men into a van that had been spotted over Illinois at other kidnapping sites.

It was horrific. Peter knew from the aftermath of natural disasters, mainly taught to him by Yondu about how far they were going in a hurricane-stricken mountain to steal metal. In these types of situations, children were vulnerable to strangers and organizations over the universe helped them stay safe.

But with those organizations cut in half, more children than ever would have been at risk.

Peter’s stomach churned as he told himself that he needed to do something. The circumstances had been very different indeed, but he was still an Earth missing child.

He needed to see Glover.

First, Peter had gone into St. Louis.

The bustling city had changed since he had come by just after his eighth birthday. The fashions were different, the technology was different and there were still a lot of posters of the missing on every lamppost. But there were still groceries, there were still post offices and mechanics, there was even the same candy store, although he suspected the previous owner’s son was now running things.

He had done his homework. A ring in Eastern Europe had been broken open in the second year of the Snap, half of the victims Sokovians who were still homeless on that fateful night – and it had been night in that part of the world – half of life was dusted.

Another ring was smashed in Australia, with rooms in hotels all over Brisbane filled with Indonesian and missing Australia schoolgirls. That particular ring had been broken in the fourth year of the Snap, by a person that Peter had a sneaking suspicion was the guy with the bow and arrows that Thor had talked about.

But there was still one, here in America. One article said that many members that had been grooming their victims had been teachers or custodians at colleges, or even high schools. The ‘Re-population Effort’, the group had called it.

Peter kept trying to remind himself that the situation would be much, much worse in Third World countries. Or on backwater planets with low fertility rates or small populations even before Thanos. But it still made him want to throw up.

Then it had gotten worse.

Before the Snap, he learnt from the internet, women and girls in developing countries would be offered jobs as maids or nannies and hide in the backs of trucks or boats before being driven to richer countries. Sometimes, they would even pay the driver to take them there. After the Snap, this had started to happen in America, in England, in Japan and other developed countries. The main difference was that girls often stayed in the same country this time.

So many young girls and women who had lost their parents, simply taking a chance. Some probably suspected the men’s ulterior motive, but didn’t care anymore.

This particular ring had been smashed on the East Coast, but the FBI suspected that there were still large sections of the Pacific Coast and Midwest that were infested with these guys.

Peter had had to call up the guy with the bow and arrow – his name still escaped Peter, although he would always remember the haircut – about this. The archer’s next target after the yakuza had been the sex ring in Los Angeles. He had brought up a list of addresses across the States.

When Peter asked if he wanted to come along, the archer had said he wanted to be with his family. Peter could understand completely.

Now as Peter walked up to the counter of a bar, he told himself that if he could just save one girl, he would feel better. Feel more prepared for when he would see Glover.

The large man with a snake tattoo over the right half of his face stood behind the bar, pouring a beer. “What?” he snorted at Peter.

Peter leaned forward and whispered, “I came about the – your ‘Re-population Effort’. Is it still going on? I mean, now everyone’s back –“

The fat man motioned for Peter to go to the disabled toilet, where a sign saying ‘Out of Order’ was nailed on. “Sorry I have to do this, mate,” he grunted, stopping him just before Peter could enter, “But we need to check for feds. You understand, don’t ya?”

Peter’s heart thudded in his chest. This man didn’t look as if he was going to take no for an answer.

Peter nodded quickly, thankful that he had left his blaster on the _Benatar_. He had a gun from a St. Charles store, but that was, thanks to a bit of alien tech, completely invisible and strapped to his chest. So even if this man ordered his shirt off, he wouldn’t see it.

The search was just a pat down and a tired-looking guy, barely older than a boy, coming out from the back to search his bag. When they found nothing, the fat man turned to Peter and said in a bored drawl, “Up the stairs. When you meet Delilah, ask for the register. Eden isn’t working today since she has crabs and Annika, Cleo, Layla and Demi are pregnant. On behalf of the Peach Cobbler tavern, enjoy your visit.”

Peter made his way up the stairs behind the disabled toilet sign. A tired-looking young woman, who was obviously related to the boy downstairs, looked up from a clipboard.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Can I –“ Peter paused, then he gave a small chuckle. “Sorry, I’m – new to this –“ That wasn’t a total lie. He hadn’t been to what could generously be called a brothel on Terra.

The corners of Delilah’s mouth curled for a split second, before she picked up her clipboard. “I recommend Brandy today, perhaps?” she asked him.

“I don’t drink.” Peter answered, confused. She gave another chuckle.

“You really _are_ new to the scene,” she picked up a pencil, one of the Number Twos that Peter had used in school, in what seemed like lifetimes ago, “There are six girls on today. I think Lexi and Roxie are with clients right now, but I can put you down for half an hour with Aurora. If you prefer something a tiny bit exotic or just aren’t fussed about talking to a girl, I would recommend Francesca.”

It disgusted Peter how this woman was talking about young women as if she were suggesting pieces of furniture for someone to buy. But he shook his head, unable to find words.

“Well, the only one left is Star,” the girl sighed, placing the clipboard down.

Almost as if it were fate, Peter told himself. “I’ll take her,” he gabbled, his stomach rolling about as he said it.

“Fifteen dollars up front for an hour,” Delilah told him, “Star’s short, but lives up to her name. Second on the left. Enjoy your visit.”

When Peter knocked on the door, he heard a voice mumble, bored, “Come in.”

He gingerly made his way inside. The room was almost dark, with the only light coming through blinds on the window. The small room had a hard wooden floor and peeling lime green wallpaper. A sad-looking mattress was shoved on top of a wooden bedstead and a dark blue canopy lay on top, with crudely cut paper stars glued on. The only other furniture in the room was a bookshelf with tattered old paperbacks from when Peter was a child.

The girl on the bed was almost skeletal, with a dark blue t-shirt hanging off her shoulders. Peter pulled the canopy back to get a better look. She was small, possibly even smaller than Mantis. She had that same, sad look in her eyes that Mantis used to have, too.

As soon as he had pulled the canopy back, Star pulled her legs onto the bed and lay down on her back, as if routine. Peter put his hands out and cried, “Whoa! Stop! Just – just let me hear your name.”

“Star,” she replied.

“You sound thirsty,” he frowned, pulling out a flask from his bag, “Please, have some.”

She stared at it for a minute, maybe wondering if there was something in there. She just shrugged and then took it from him. She honestly didn’t care anymore, Peter could see that.

When she had taken a rather long swig, he took it back and asked again, “What’s your name?”

“Star.” she repeated.

“Is that your real name?” Peter asked her.

She paused for a second, her eyes glancing towards the door. “It’s OK,” he reassured her, “I’m the only one here.”

She swallowed and in a small whisper, responded with, “Rosemary. But they already had one.”

Then Peter asked her, “How old are you?”

She quickly answered, “Twenty-four.” Maybe too quickly. Peter’s eyes looked her up and down. It was hard to tell when this young woman hadn’t been eating properly, but he doubted she was a day over twenty or twenty-one.

He looked around for a second and then got up to go to the window. It was definitely wide enough for the both of them to get out. But there were no drainpipes or even a fire escape ladder. Not that that mattered when Peter could fly, but it did give one explanation as to why the girls hadn’t tried to escape.

“Where you from, Rosemary?” he asked, looking back at her.

She waited for a moment before telling him, “Memphis.”

“Did you come here before the Dust Rapture, or after?” he asked.

Rosemary was a tiny bit afraid. Peter wondered if she thought he was a friend of whosoever kept the girls or line, or a cop. He knelt down in front of her and held her hands in his.

“Listen, Rosemary,” he whispered to her, “trust me when I say I was kidnapped, too. It was ages ago, when I was a little kid. I know how terrifying – it can be. You feel like you’re alone. You want to cry, but they shout at you if you do. You don’t know if you’ll see tomorrow. You don’t know if you’ll ever see your family again. But I’m safe now. I have my family. Now, I have a feeling that you’ve been here for several years. You haven’t had any safety and I doubt very much privacy. If you’re too scared to answer me, that’s fine; everyone’s different. But it might help you.”

There was a longer pause before Rosemary took a deep breath. “I went inside the guy’s van three months after everyone disappeared. I was with my – my friends from school –“ (he was right; she was younger than she said) “ – the three of us. My mom and my dad had gone. The guy offered people jobs in the center of Memphis. Aside from us, he took men, women and children. He dropped most of the men off at this garage place and said that he was going to set the rest of us up at a motel.”

Rosemary bit the end of her nail and a silent tear rolled down the girl’s cheek. Peter coaxed her, “You’re doing very well, Rosemary. Keep going.”

She took another deep breath. “But he didn’t. He took us out to a field and then shot – the four men left. My friend Heather and I were splattered…” she blinked back tears for a short moment, “He tasered anyone who tried to fight. Then five other guys came down from nearby trees and separated everyone. I think – they were being a tiny bit kind, since they allowed two moms to stay with their kids. But Heather went in the trunk of a car and my friend Casey and I were taken away in another car with a younger girl. I think she was in our local middle school.

“I was – told later that the van was at the state corner, where Tennessee meets Arkansas and Alabama. We were driven north into Missouri. Casey used to be here, in this bar. But fourteen months ago, this guy from Chicago brought her.”

“Brought her?” The hairs on the back of Peter’s head stood up.

Rosemary explained. “It’s cheaper than mail-order brides. I guess I’m happy that she’s not in one of these dumps any more. I’m actually a ‘temporary’ girl.”

“What’s that?” Peter asked as he started to set the boosters on his shoes. If Rosemary noticed, she didn’t say anything.

“It means that since we’re younger, we’ll more than likely get pregnant soon. And when you ‘serve your purpose’, the father has a choice of marrying us, or letting us move in with them. Quite a lot of them use us because they lost their wives and girlfriends, actually.”

Trying to keep his lunch down – and it wasn’t even lunchtime – Peter then stood up again. “OK, I’m going to ask three more questions. First off, did your friend get pregnant?”

Rosemary nodded.

“Right. Second question; are you younger than twenty-four?”

“Twenty-two after New Year’s,” she murmured.

Peter did a quick calculation and worked out that she must have been sixteen when she abducted. The age of consent in Missouri was sixteen and Peter wondered if that was why she’d been taken here. Or, more likely, her abductors hadn’t cared.

“Third question,” Peter pulled Rosemary up by her limp wrist and held her tightly to his chest, “Do you get airsick?”

“No,” she replied, puzzled.

“All right.” Peter tapped his helmet and the visor covered his face, before he shot out of the window. For the next few minutes, all he heard was Rosemary screaming at the top of her lungs as he flew over the buildings and landed in his grandfather’s back yard.

Rosemary wobbled on her bare feet, unsure if she would faint or vomit first. Then Peter called into the house, “Hello? Could someone put that arrow guy on the phone? And not Groot this time.”

Within two days, Peter was leafing through news channels when he saw the front doors of the bar being kicked down by a S.W.A.T team. He heard the sentence ‘_sixth ‘Re-population Effort’ house raided in Midwest since the Great Return_’.

Smiling to himself, Peter walked into the kitchen and started making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Seeing Rocket pulling apart a flashlight, he asked, “Get a call from the arrow guy yet?”

“Yeah, got a message when you were out,” Rocket tried holding the screwdriver in his fiddly paws, but it proved a challenge, “Said the hooker’s on her way back to Tennessee. His lady wasn’t too happy about having one in the house, though.”

“Well, she’s not a hooker,” Peter began spreading the peanut butter, “She’s named Rosemary.”

“Rosemary, hooker, it all blurs after a while,” Rocket got down from the chair and picked up a screwdriver with a different head, “You ready to talk to the butthead who people think murdered you?”

Peter took a bite of his sandwich. “I’d say I am,” he replied, spraying crumbs everywhere.

But he was still extremely nervous.

“Why does Mantis have to go?” Rocket asked from the underside of the spaceship, twisting the spanner in his paw, “I’m better at interrogating.”

“Because out of all of you, Mantis looks the most Terran,” Peter explained as he straightened the tie on the suit he had worn to Tony Stark’s funeral, “and she can read his emotional state.”

“But I could easily fight this man to the death.” Drax argued.

Peter sighed then cleared his throat. “For the eighth time, Drax, we are not going to beat the answer out of him. We are…” he tried to search for the right word, “diplomatic.”

Rocket and Groot laughed. Peter scowled at them.

“Laugh all you want, guys, but my way’s better.” Peter told them as the two of them left the house, ready to go and see a pedophile serial killer.

The IDs had worked. The two of them sat across from a tired-looking man in an orange jumpsuit and chains.

Patrick Edward Glover looked very different from his mugshot. He was a good twenty-five years older (allowing time for the Snap), very worn and he had grown a beard, which was turning white.

“I already said,” he groaned loudly, “I should be allowed to live. My documentation had me as deceased, so I shouldn’t even be on Death Row.”

“We’re not here about that, Mr Glover,” Peter sighed, “We’re here to talk about Peter Quill.”

Peg leaned back, grunting. “I didn’t take him! I know that I said I saw aliens, I know you won’t believe me, but aliens have been to Earth! I have no clue why they’d take a redneck brat.”

Peter clenched his fists under the table but let himself breathe. Then he asked, trying to let the man slip, “How much did you tell Miranda?”

Before Peg could answer, Mantis asked him, tilting her head, “Why did you let Miranda live?” It was a question Peter wanted to know as well.

Peg sighed, then smiled as he straightened in his seat. Maybe he was remembering Miranda. “She was such a sweet girl. Often I wanted to take a kid, but didn’t for some reason. She was the opposite. Miranda was a little darling. She looked up at me with those doe-brown eyes in the back of the car and I thought ‘You know what, Patrick? She might be your ticket to freedom.’”

“You mean Canada?” Peter remembered the transcripts alone. Peg nodded.

“I still remember her lovely little voice. She was too small and skinny for twelve, actually. When I got her in the car, I drove off as she lay on the floor, scared out of her wits. Tied her hands, stuffed a handkerchief in her mouth. About ten minutes later she managed to get her mouth free. She asked me, the very first words I heard the girl say, ‘Are you going to kill me?’ I didn’t say anything. She then said ‘Mommy and Daddy don’t have any money.’ It’s sweet when they aren’t aware.”

Peg was actually enjoying this. Peter wondered if this guy had told anyone over the last twenty-five years.

“It was when I stopped that I realised she was my way out. When we were with Rocky and Fern, I told her, ‘Pretend to be sick and I’ll let you go later’. She was scared out of her mind. She went up and she was holding her stomach. She said ‘Please help me, I don’t feel well.’”

Peter wanted to pull this guy’s teeth out. “And then you killed Rocky Larson and Fern Stables?”

Peg shrugged. “Three hours after that. I said that since she didn’t stop me, she was now my accomplice and as bad as I was.” Then he asked, “You want to know about Quill? I bet you’re guessing that he screamed as much as Miranda did. That he cried like Miranda did. That I did everything to him that I did with Miranda, did with all those other boys and girls, even the big ones. Well, I’m going to keep saying this until I next die – I did not take Peter Quill.”

Peter paused. Mantis looked at him for help. The anger, resentment and desire flooding through Peg was obviously giving her pain.

“I know.” Peter answered.

Peg seemed confused. Then Peter moved in closer to the man. “That’s because I am Peter Quill. And I’m back from outer space.”

Peg was thinking, Peter could tell. Wondering if he was being tricked. Then Mantis took her hat off and placed her antennae close to Peg’s brain.

The man looked queasy as she closed her eyes and the antennae glowed.

“I have information – on three more children he murdered. Ones that the police suspect he killed but haven’t proved it. Evidence that will connect him.” She frowned in concentration. “A little boy and two girls. I – they’re so sad.”

Peter turned to Peg. “Dixie Ray, Ella Armstrong, Prue Daniels?”

The terrified prisoner nodded once Mantis finished. That was enough for Peter. He just stood up and they left the room, pulling a notebook out as Mantis started to describe what she saw.

As Peter watched the news and saw that Peg had been charged with three more murders, he thought about his case.

If he went public and said why his case had been closed, why his picture was no longer on the FBI website, people online would be asking about their loved ones. Whether they’d been taken by aliens when it was much more likely that they were murdered or held someplace or even lost in the wilderness.

And amateur sleuths would be looking forever when there were many, many more missing people out there that they should focus on.

Would he tell the world what happened? Or was it better to stay silent.

Thinking about Rosemary and Miranda and all the other children out there that were lost, alone, mistreated, both before and after the Snap, the fact that he was one of them, was the choice behind his decision.

Getting up the following morning, he picked up his granddad’s phone in the hallway.

He needed to make a call.

**Author's Note:**

> _Mermaid Lemonade_ (also the name of an alcoholic cocktail) and 'Beyond Reach' are inspired by the band _Soul Asylum_ and their 1993 hit 'Runaway Train'. The original MTV broadcast, which varied from country to country and I believe there were three different versions in the US, featured faces of missing children and young adults in their videos. As of this writing, I believe half a dozen children from the three American versions are still missing. The original Australian version was recalled and is impossible to find because some of the children featured in that particular video were victims of a serial killer. It is the same with two of those in the German music video.
> 
> I believed that if this song or a similar one existed in the MCU, then Peter Quill would almost certainly be shown. It's still a good song nevertheless.
> 
> If you are a regular visitor to my stories, you probably wonder why I write about missing people and serial killers in my stories. Well, let me enlighten you.
> 
> When my sister and I were very young, not too young but not old enough to know about why children go missing, a little girl disappeared near our uncle's house on the other side of the country. We promised that we would write about kidnappings until she came home, thinking it would only take a couple of weeks.
> 
> She never returned and is still missing.
> 
> That started my interest in missing children. As I grew up, I became fascinated by all of these unfortunate circumstances. I guess it made me paranoid in my teenage years. I also had an interest in natural disasters, following the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and other natural disasters that were shaping our world while we grew up. When I got a little older and realized that women and children were the most vulnerable after these events, as well as an interest in the sex trade after watching _Taken_, my stories dipped into these unfathomable depths.
> 
> Despite the horrific subjects in this story, I hope you have liked it.


End file.
